Partners – FAST

This program is sponsored by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, but is managed under the umbrella of the NASA University Leadership Initiative Program. The NASA ULI program tasks universities with taking leadership in applied research in aeronautics and to train the next generation’s workforce. Establishing partners in government and industry that will help transition the technologies is a key requirement of the program.

Development of the FAST measurement technology methodology requires an experienced, multi-disciplinary team to tackle several key technical challenges. As shown in the figure below, UT Austin serves as the lead institution and has expertise in experimental aerothermodynamics (Clemens), aeroelasticity (Sirohi), CFD, scientific machine learning and optimization (Willcox). The University of Michigan (Cesnik) provides expertise in developing full system aerothermoelastic simulations of hypersonic vehicles, and UT San Antonio (Combs) provides complementary expertise in experimental hypersonics and access to a Mach 7 Ludwieg tube. The educational program is being led by Huston Tillotson University (Masino and Topkara), which is a Historically Black College located in Austin, Texas.

The university partners will lead technology development and provide workforce development and training. An important aspect of our training program is the participation of a diverse student body. In fact, while Huston Tillotson is an HBCU, both UT Austin and UT San Antonio are Hispanic Serving Institutions. The Huston Tillotson co-PIs will develop curricula that will prepare their undergraduates to take on research assignments and internships at the member institutions. Sandia (Blonigan) provides additional capabilities for high-fidelity aerothermodynamic simulations and reduced-order modeling for input into the aerothermoelastic-response model, as well as critical guidance on our work’s relevance to actual flight systems. We have teamed with Lockheed Martin Corp., which is one of the nation’s leading industrial developers of hypersonic flight systems. Lockheed will serve as the main conduit for technology transition as well as provide expertise and guidance on hypersonic vehicle design, flight testing, and vehicle guidance and control.